Jan Fernback - Diluted Community Concept

New Media & Society
http://nms.sagepub.com
Beyond the diluted community concept: a symbolic interactionist

perspective on online social relations
Jan Fernback
New Media Society 2007; 9; 49
DOI: 10.1177/1461444807072417
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http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/1/49
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049-070 NMS-072417.qxd 10/1/07 2:44 PM Page 49
new media & society

Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
Vol9(1):49–69 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444807072417]
ARTICLE
Beyond the diluted

community concept:
a symbolic interactionist
perspective on online
social relations1
JAN FERNBACK
Temple University, USA
Abstract
The study of cybercommunity is inevitably linked to the
development of the internet amid other cultural phenomena, and
cybercommunity as a cultural practice has clearly reached a point
of critical mass.The concept of online community has become
increasingly diluted as it evolves into a pastiche of elements that
ostensibly ‘signify’ community.This study grapples with the
concept of community in cyberspace and suggests alternative ways
of characterizing online social relations that avoid the vagaries of
‘community’. Based on interviews and a theoretical consideration
of online community, it finds that the metaphor of ‘community’
in cyberspace is one of convenient togetherness without real
responsibility.This study suggests a symbolic interactionist
approach to the examination of online social relationships that is
free of the controversy and structural-functional baggage of the
term ‘community’. It suggests that community is an evolving
process, and that commitment is the truly desired social ideal in
social interaction, whether online or offline.
Key words
community • cyber community • cyberspace • internet
• online community • social interaction • virtual community
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New Media & Society 9(1)
INTRODUCTION
Since the late 19th century, sociologists, anthropologists, political
scientists and cultural prophets have kept the social quest for community in
the limelight of popular discourse.This discourse scrutinizes the nature of
community and its value within public culture. Numerous social observers
(Sennett, 1977; Bellah et al., 1985; Rheingold, 1993; Barlow, 1995) have
documented the perceived decay of communal life in post-industrial nations.
Some of these observers extol the internet as a prospective site for capturing
an ideal form of community in western nations. Generally, western citizens
conceive of communities in the archetypal sense described by social theorists
in the late 19th century: place-based social interaction, collective value
systems, and shared symbol systems create a normative structure typified
by organic traditions, collective rituals, fellowship and consensus building.
To this end, community is a social palliative, idealized to the extent that
it has become fetishized. But other theorists (Cohen 1985; Etzioni 1995)
suggest a contemporary view of community that is less place based
and more process oriented. For these scholars, community includes
processes of social solidarity, material processes of production and
consumption, law making and symbolic processes of collective
experience and cultural meaning.The varied ideas about communal
existence depict an evolutionary and dynamic construction of community
that is globally relevant given the proliferation of online communication
technology.
That dynamism is the focus of this article, which examines the concept of
community in cyberspace and suggests alternative ways of characterizing
online social relations that avoid the vagaries of ‘community’.The idea of
cybercommunity is compelling – to leave behind our bodies, and our
prejudices and limitations associated with those bodies, to interact solely as
minds in an unfettered environment. Perhaps this is why much scholarship
addresses the nature of online community.This study will examine some
theoretical assumptions about community, contextualize the scholarship
on cybercommunity, present findings from interviews with online forum
participants and suggest other conceptualizations of online social
interaction as a means of paradigmatic progress regarding the narrative on
cybercommunity. Building on Bennis and Slater’s (1968) ‘portable roots’
metaphor of symbolic commitment, this study advocates a symbolic
interactionist perspective on cybercommunity that focuses on the process of
community building as an active human endeavor. It is hoped that these
alternative conceptualizations will supplement the corpus of work on
cybercommunity in a nuanced and constructive way that contributes to
public understanding of, and dialogue about, community in western
cultures.
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Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept
WHAT STUDIES OF ONLINE COMMUNITY REVEAL

Early studies of online community focus on the possibilities of territorialization
– the internet as new social space. Many of these studies connect
philosophically with urban sociologists in the conceptualization of community
as type, as human ecology, as local network, and as economic conflict. For
example, Benedikt (1991) asserts that virtual space is materially analogous to
physical space in that it has geographic and physical properties. Rheingold
(1993) contends that virtual communities perform the solidifying functions
of traditional, pre-industrial community. Baym (1995) finds online groups
with ‘richly developed cultures’ transforming the internet into a new
communal space. According to Whittle (1997) the real power of virtual
communities lies within our ability to create and build those communities,
not merely to choose them. Miller (1996) agrees, arguing that, although
advances in communication technology are often blamed for the destruction
of community, online technology can be used to restore and strengthen
the impulse of humanity to create and sustain community. Jones (1995)
observes that any definition of online community must encompass spatial
as well as social elements.Thus, Jones supports a robust conception of
community that connects material/spatial customs with the transmission
of social values and belief systems. Some social prognosticators offer a
cautionary dismissal of cybercommunity.While Doheny-Farina (1996)
offers a tentative acceptance of virtual community networking, he
stresses that it cannot develop at the expense of physical communities.
Miller (1996) conceives of virtual community as merely another capitalist
venture that will guarantee ‘the same limited supply of short-term
and superficial satisfactions that the market presently supplies’
(1996: 327).
As more studies of this nature proliferated, the concept of online community
became a more accepted social construct. Studies encompassed discursive
communities online (Reid, 1991; Howard, 1997); identity (Bromberg, 1996;
Turkle,1995; Baym, 1998; Donath, 1999); community as social reality (Watson,
1997; Kolko and Reid, 1998;Van Dijk, 1998; Baym, 2000); networking (Schuler,
1996;Wellman et al., 1996;Wellman, 1997; Horrigan et al., 2001); the public
sphere (Ess, 1996; Fernback, 1997; Jankowski and van Selm, 2000).These
studies demonstrate that online community is a significant social construct in
terms of its culture, its structure and its political and economic character.
Some recent studies of online community explore the nature of community in
deeper ways, in terms of social trust (Gattiker et al., 2001); place-based ‘freenets’
(Silver, 2000); the internet paradox (Kraut et al., 1998); and global economic
interactions (Castells, 2001; Stewart and Pileggi, forthcoming).This includes
literature arguing against the romanticization of online community (Wellman
and Gulia, 1999). It is not surprising that so much literature on virtual
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community exists. In the tradition of scholarship involving the social uses of

technology, new media and community research examines the apparent
transformations of structures of social organization. Globally, in developed
nations, new media are playing a role in these transformations. But the
corpus of research on online community has not done enough to problematize
community itself: do humans have an intrinsic need to form associative
groups? How can communal association be dysfunctional? Has community
been essentialized and theorized to the extent that it has become almost
meaningless? The next section considers assumptions about community in
new media studies.
QUESTIONS OF COMMUNITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Jankowski (2002) explores scholarship investigating the relationship between
community and new media, stating that:
‘it is safe to say that the concept of community is as central to present-day studies
of the internet as it was during the earlier years of sociology.The main difference
seems to be redirection of emphasis from geographic place to a feeling or sense of
collectivity.’ (2002: 37).
Castells (2001) suggests that community in the internet era needs to be
redefined.The new definition of community should be ‘de-emphasizing
its cultural component . . . and de-linking its social existence from a single
kind of material support’ (p. 127).These statements indicate an uneasiness with
the assumptions being made about community and its place in new media
scholarship. But it isn’t just the internet that has confounded scholarly ideas
about community. Stacey (1974) proposes that the concept of community is
ineffectual in sociological research because it cannot be adequately defined,
and it is too normative. She suggests that the study of social relations is best
served by examining institutional arrangements in geographic areas.
The term community has lost much of its meaning in western
culture because the discourse about it tends to be totalizing. Community is
a political, cultural, economic, and technical buzzword. Community is
descriptive and prescriptive, local and global, spatially bound or boundaryless,
public or private, organic or mechanical, intentional or accidental, purposive
or aimless, oppressive or liberating, functional or dysfunctional. It can be a
shared interest, shared kinship or shared space. It can be physical locality or
collective interests or collective memory or crisis constituencies or marketing
devices. In journalism, ‘community media’ are au courant, but the term is used
to mean local media. In business, community is a marketing strategy – it
is about audience demographics and market segmentation. Community
has become an agent in consumption engineering; it is the lure to impel
the consumption of some commodity through direct marketing efforts. In
sociology, community has traditionally been functional in nature – it doesn’t
account for ‘out’ of community, isolation, or social dysfunction. It is too
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guided by social norms, not only in the geographical sense, but in the
affective sense (as in ‘a feeling of community’). Community can be gangs,
terrorists, anarchists, or racists.The concept of community, online or offline,
has become increasingly hollow as it evolves into a pastiche of elements that
ostensibly ‘signify’ community.
Nevertheless, scholarship on cybercommunity has provided groundwork
for discussion of social relational structures in contemporary society.The
study of online community is inevitably linked to the development of the
internet amid other cultural phenomena, and cybercommunity as a cultural
practice has reached a point of critical mass. As political discourse is imbued
with the impulse toward community as well as the hyper-individualism of
Libertarian ideology, a critique of the nature of community environments
takes on greater cultural significance.The online realm is an important site for
the analysis of this phenomenon.The distinction between the ‘real’ and the
‘virtual’ has become much less useful as the internet is firmly ingrained in
daily cultural existence. Papacharissi (2002) argues that, since online and
offline interactions occur in a single social realm, the false real/virtual
dichotomy blunts the interpretive power of new media and community
research. Increasingly, scholars are recognizing the complexities inherent in
the study of online community. Data from the Pew internet and American
Life Project (Horrigan et al., 2001) found that 84 percent of internet
users (about 90 million Americans) had contacted an online group at
some point in their internet use.The study characterizes internet
communities as vibrant and supportive, qualities evident in activities such as
church groups or neighborhood activism. But while they argue that
‘something positive is afoot with respect to the internet and community
life’ (2001: 10), they also observe that, ‘people’s use of the internet to
participate in organizations is not necessarily evidence of a revival of
civic engagement, but it has clearly stimulated new associational activity’
(2001: 10).
The Pew study claims that ‘glocalization’ is evident in cyberspace – people
are expanding their social plane while also binding themselves more deeply to
their local communities. Originally used as a marketing term in Japan, the
term ‘glocalization’ speaks to the desire to normalize the realm of the global
into the familiar terrain of the local (Robertson, 1992). Appropriated by
Wellman (2002), the term means that all aspects of the social realm have
moved from traditional conceptualizations of homogenous community
(which Wellman terms ‘little boxes’) toward ‘glocalized’ networks (where
households are connected globally and locally through sparsely linked
networks) and further toward ‘networked individualism’ in which individuals
become linked, thinly, and unmindful of spatial boundary. Thus, glocalization
results from strong local connection and wide-ranging global interaction.
Wellman’s glocalization phenomenon is part of his conception of network
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analysis, a constructive way of examining online social relationships without

an a priori assumption of community. His network analysis is highly
individualistic in nature:
this is a time for individuals and their networks, and not for groups.The
proliferation of computer-supported social networks fosters changes in ‘network
capital’: how people contact, interact, and obtain resources from each other.
The broadly-embracing collectivity, nurturing and controlling, has become a
fragmented, variegated and personalized social network. (2002: 2)
Wellman sees an evolution to the use of computer-communication networks

toward loosely structured, interpersonal networking, rather than tight, bounded
groups.The community metaphor is inappropriate for Wellman, since individuals
in the same household can belong to different personal networks.This
conception is purposive, however, and functional in nature. In spirit,Wellman’s
networked individualism lacks the sense of collectivity sought by Dewey
(1927) or Etzioni (1995). Networked individualism downplays any culturally
relevant collectivism or group activism initiated in online interactions. It
is not the metaphorical online community of solid social bonds and
commitment.
To scrutinize the metaphor of online community, the next section includes
an analysis of in-depth interviews with participants in online groups.These
interviews are included as a means to inform the theoretical analysis of online
community.The subjects have experience in various online groups that they
regard as ‘communal’ in nature, but the interview questions do not place the
mantle of community onto online social relations in an attempt to understand
the subjects’ constructions of these online relations.Thus, the connections
between community, online community, and social interaction that emerge
from the interviews are the connections made by the interviewees.This study
is guided by a symbolic interactionist framework to investigate the nature
of social relationships formed in online groups.This paradigm provides a
valuable means for understanding how the symbolic representations of
community in online environments influence the participants’ notions about
communal interaction.
Symbolic interactionism highlights symbolic communication as a device
of reality construction. Symbolic interactionism asserts that individual and
material realities are constructed through a dynamic, communicative process.
Blumer’s (1969) interpretive domain of symbolic interactionism posits that
humans act toward social stimuli based on meanings they hold about
those stimuli.These meanings develop through social interaction, and people’s
interpretations mediate their understandings of their culture (Blumer, 1969;
Musolf, 2003).Thus, the symbolic interactionist paradigm emphasizes human
agency – our ability to actively construct meanings and act upon them – in
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an enterprise that speaks to the study of community. Cohen’s (1985)

focus on community as symbolic meaning reflects this interactionist
perspective.
Kreiling and Sims (1981) describe how symbolic interactionism arose as
part of a new view of community that regards the self in terms of community
culture.They claim that the work of Robert Park and other Chicago
School symbolic interactionists is about the rediscovery or formation of new
communities.The Chicago School symbolic interactionists authored various
investigations of urban life, including studies of juvenile gangs, Chicago race
riots and urban ethnic enclaves (Musolf, 2003). Park and other Chicago School
sociologists sought to conceive human action as a result of the interplay
between the self and social elements (Kreiling and Sims, 1981).Therefore,
‘symbolic interactionism . . . might well be regarded as an intellectual account of
the Progressives’ images and conceptions of the ideal community’ (1981: 14),
whereby the theory expresses the cultural mythos and action of individual
social groups.The symbolic interactionists, claim Kreiling and Sims (1981),
endeavored to grasp the method of meaning construction through symbolic
interpretation as a way to build community through consensus.
As the background for this study, Blumer’s (1969) notion of symbolic
interactionism maintains that: (1) humans act toward objects and events
because of the meanings those objects possess; (2) meanings arise from social
interaction; and (3) humans interpret the objects and events in their environ-
ments to generate meaning.The following section describes the process by
which people interviewed about their online social activity create meanings
about community through social interaction.Their ideas about community are
formed, in part, through interactions in online forums in addition to
those in their physical interactions. Consequently, interviewees act in their
communities according to the meanings they derive about their environment,
whether online or offline, from those interactions.
METHOD
To understand the meanings of online ‘community’ for participants in virtual
social spaces, 30 people with experience in online groups were interviewed in
depth.The aim of the interviews was to document the experience of online
social interaction for participants to understand how they characterize the
nature of those interactions.To investigate the meanings these people derive
from their interaction in online groups, a qualitative approach rooted in a
symbolic interactionist perspective was employed (following Blumer, 1969).
To assess the perceived realities of online social interaction, the members of
these communities must be questioned to determine the salience of this form
of social activity in their lives. Interpretive strategies gleaned mostly from
anthropological studies were applied to elucidate findings.
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Qualitative methods are suitable for examining the process of human

meaning construction. Qualitative research attempts ‘to understand the
mechanisms of social processes, and to comprehend and explain why both
actors and processes are as they are’ note Vidich and Lyman (1994: 23). A
symbolic interactionist perspective is useful in this effort since it claims
that human actions are imbued with social meaning, and that people act in
relation to the meanings they form about social phenomena.These meanings
evolve as they are interpreted and reinterpreted through social interaction
(Blumer, 1969; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1992).Thus, participants in online
forums, according to a symbolic interactionist perspective, cultivate attitudes
about community based on the meaning of community in their lives.Their
understanding of community is influenced by their interactions in online and
offline environments and by their interpretation of those interactions.
The sample of interviewees was drawn from several online groups that
lacked a specific community-oriented charter. Since this study seeks to
explore online contexts in which users engage in social relations that may
possibly be categorized as community, interviewees were not solicited from
online groups created with the intention of reproducing commonly received
notions of community. Because those groups are self-conscious attempts at
community, they are ‘saturated’ and are therefore not useful in the exploration
of social aggregations that may or may not be communal in nature.Thus, the
study of online groups such as community chat rooms may not lend evidence
to this study since the inquiry focuses on whether participants consider social
relations in cyberspace to be community. A sample including groups with an
explicit community mission would yield the result of finding community a
priori.Therefore, subjects were solicited from randomly chosen online
groups (listservs and newsgroups) without a community-oriented vision.The
groups included the following orienting subjects: Eastern philosophy, political
philosophy, graduate studies in the humanities, US politics, general health, and
homosexual issues. After participating in these groups for a period of six
months, the author culled a pool of participants’ names, and solicited,
via email, answers to an open-ended questionnaire. Some interviewees
agreed to be interviewed offline, in person. A total of 30 participants were
interviewed in depth.The majority were from the US and the UK, but two
participants were Canadian and one was German. All subjects had been
online for at least six months, and all regularly participated in online group
communication.
This study used a semi-standardized, open-ended interview technique
described by Herman-Kinney and Verschaeve (2003).This procedure involves
asking a list of prearranged questions, but it allows the interviewer to seek
additional information from interviewees who are exceptionally responsive.
This technique permits researcher flexibility while providing an increased
comparability of responses, simplicity of data analysis and better data reliability
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(Patton, 1990).The in-person interviews generally lasted two hours, and

were audiotaped and later transcribed. Online interviews varied in length
from three to 10 pages. Interview questions were organized into four sections:
(1) information about use of online groups; (2) the extent to which subjects
considered their virtual social interactions to be cybercommunity; (3) what
meanings they gathered from interaction in virtual communities; and (4) how
subjects’ online and offline experiences were integrated. Participants interpret
their own online experiences using their own lexicon, and from their own
perspective.
Data consist of interviewees’ responses to open-ended questions regarding
online social interaction. Using Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) ‘constant
comparative’ method, each transcript was reviewed several times to construct
a systematic analysis. First, interviews are analyzed to identify overall themes;
these themes are coded accordingly. Second, the themes are evaluated in
accordance with the conceptual arguments sustaining the study.Third,
the interviewees’ words are interpreted in reference to a logical construct
developed during the thematic coding process.This method permits
the researcher to generate sound, consistent theoretical constructs while
organizing data systematically (Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
FINDINGS
The most significant finding of this research is that participants in online groups
possess incongruous understandings of the character of online social relations.
Their opinions about the nature of communal interaction online are rooted in
meanings they construct about the value of community and from their
interactions with others in their online and offline social spheres.Two identifiable
themes emerged from the interviews, as reported in the following sections.
All responses, unless otherwise noted, come from interviews conducted
online.
Online communication and public life

Asked to characterize their online social interaction and to describe
online group interaction’s impact (if any) on public life, most respondents
demonstrate ambivalent attitudes about their online social experiences. A
19-year-old female who participates in several online spirituality forums finds
people in her groups to be ‘tolerant, inquisitive, and communicative’. She says:
I see [my online groups] as an example of what telecommunications could/should

be used for. [W]e share ideas, learn about each other, and occasionally argue. It’s
grown into a small community of people who recognize and care about each
other.The hostility common in other conferences isn’t in existence.
Despite her characterization of her participation in online groups in these

terms, when asked her opinion about some online citizens’ claims that online
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activity, like religion, can provide meaning in people’s lives, she claims she
doesn’t find particular meaning in online groups:
I guess it’s not true for me, but if [other people] find meaning online, good for
them. Anything that enables people to communicate more is a good thing. I like
the possibilities for greater understanding and less judgment based on surface
values; but in the end, the Net isn’t going to change people. People will simply
change it.
Like most of the interviewees, this respondent uses the term ‘community’ to
characterize her online social interactions, embracing the symbolic dimension
of community, which exceeds its formalist nature. Nonetheless, her statements
reveal opposing perspectives of online social activity pertaining to public life
versus personal significance. Symbolic interaction theory emphasizes
collective human agency, not just symbolic communication.This interviewee
participates in collective communication and appears to support the idea of
social action based in online ‘communities,’ but she balks at the notion
that her online activity can have significant personal meaning. Her comments
suggest that she may not equate her online communal experiences with
other social institutions, like religion, which have deep social significance and
cultural richness. For her, the character of online activity appears to be more
sociocultural and less personal.
A 25-year-old female participating in numerous groups for three years
reveals contradictory views about online communication’s role in public
life:
Online citizenship is another form of community. It can help build confidence
and help us learn how to reach out to others and communicate better with
them. It is used by many as a substitute for offline communities and friendships,
which is unhealthy for the individual and unhealthy for offline society. But it can
make a wonderful addition to life and an excellent tool for self-improvement.
For this respondent, online community is a symbolic confidence-booster, but

a true investment in online community is socially undesirable. She continues,
providing her opinion about whether online activity can provide meaning in
people’s lives:
I feel sad for someone whose life lacked meaning or was given additional
meaning by getting online.The Net can help to meet people and it can be
relaxing, entertaining and educational. But I don’t see what meaning it
could add to someone’s life unless they are totally isolated from their offline
community. In which case, they should use the Net as a step toward becoming a
part of their communities and not as a substitute.
Despite her use of the term ‘community’, this interviewee views her online
activity in terms of the one-on-one experiences and relationships she has
cultivated. She appears to support the symbolic interactionist notion that
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symbolic communication (online community) can be used as a form of

purposeful social action. However, she claims that people cannot be active in
a community without a sense of propinquity.Thus, true community is not
divorced from its physical manifestation. She argues that seeking community
in cyberspace is not an effective means for revitalizing the public sphere in
contemporary society:
It would be better for people to break down the barriers of isolation within our
own communities . . . The source of isolation and lack of public life is often fear.
The Net offers protection to those who cannot work past the fear.There is
ample reason for that fear to exist, but it is unhealthy for people to give into it
completely and unhealthy for society . . . to seek the refuge . . . of the computer
screen. ‘Public life’ will only become more dangerous and isolated if we do
that.The Net can . . . enable an individual to participate in a ‘public life’ and
break past feelings of isolation, but it is not a substitute for interaction with the
flesh-and-blood people of offline communities.
Her observations reflect the idea that communities are physical entities.While
online activity may spur social action, her ideas about community seem to
coincide with Wellman’s (2002) notion of ‘networked individualism’.This
conception of online interaction is limited, then, in its functioning as a form
of community. Other statements indicate a similar notion that online social
contact is disconnected from the public sphere of communal interaction.
When asked to describe online group interaction’s impact (if any) on
public life, a 42-year-old male who operates several listservs reveals
skepticism regarding the place of online communication in the public
landscape:
The internet is rapidly turning into a commercial business. As one example, a
discussion group I frequented was half spam and half thoughtful messages.
Now it is exclusively spam (last time I looked there were NO more legitimate
messages being sent).The Web is turning from small time personal publishing to
big business – either sales or mass entertainment . . . On top of that, I personally
don’t find isolation and lack of public life in my personal life.
For this respondent, online social interaction has a commercial/functional

character that does not contribute to a sense of community.The commercial
nature of online activity precludes the internet, for this user, from having a
useful place in public life. A symbolic interactionist interpretation of these
comments demonstrates understandings of community that vary among
users. Some speak of commitment to a community experience online but
often contradict these declarations when asked specifically what their
online interactions mean to them.The tenets of symbolic interactionism
maintain that humans make choices, construct meanings and act based
on those meanings. Despite some remarks that embrace the notion of
community building online, the meaning of community for these respondents
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is rooted in physical place.The online realm has limited utility, for them, in
contributing to community and public life. Interviewees seem to separate
online social relations from offline communal interaction.These understandings
of online social relations and community are explored in greater depth in the
next section.
The meaning of online activity as stereotype

Asked to describe ‘your feelings and opinions about the phenomenon of
online group interaction’ and to equate the ‘quality of your offline and
online social experiences’, most respondents ascribed an ephemeral quality to
their online communal relationships. Some, however, regarded online and
offline social interaction as indistinguishable. A 44-year-old male participant
claims: ‘It’s fun and I see it as no different from the offline aspects of my
life’.These comments challenge the notions expressed earlier that online
interaction, when viewed in communal terms, is separated from (and
perhaps inferior to) offline social interaction. A 53-year-old male exhibits
similar thoughts:
We once had geographic communities, then they became workplace communities,
and then we were downsized or turned into consultants or otherwise split apart.
There is little community of any kind now.The internet does fill a gap, as does
talk radio.
But, when asked in an in-person interview whether online activity, like religion,
can provide meaning in people’s lives, a 30-year-old female respondent claims
that people who find a sense of ‘meaning’ in their online groups need to ‘get a
life’. She asserts:
Some online citizens are pathetic and need to get a life. It’s ok as a supplement,
but if the net is all that gives meaning to your life then you have serious
issues.
The responses that follow, prompted by the same question, demonstrate an

eagerness to discuss ‘meaning’ in relation to online social activity but an
unwillingness to ascribe a deep significance to their own online experiences.
For most interviewees, online communal activity may provide some utility in
public life for people with issues of shyness or isolation.They appear ardent to
distance themselves from what they may perceive to be the stereotype of the
introverted internet user.
The 42-year-old male respondent quoted above states: ‘Sounds kind of sad
– I’d be disappointed with life if online activity were even a minor way to
provide meaning for my life.’ A female respondent, 48, asserts that people
don’t find great meaning online ‘if you had meaning in your life BEFORE
you became involved in the internet’. But, she sees potential for online social
interaction to be meaningful in public life:
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At one time American society was very social.Today we don’t even know
our neighbor’s name. Because of the frequent moving families do today, people
simply don’t have the ‘roots’ that they used to.They don’t feel like they are a
part of anything.Women used to have a solid support group that is no longer
present.
This respondent echoes other interviewees who perceive the possibilities

for internet communication to contribute to a vital public sphere, but she
does not observe that same potential for her own life. A 33-year-old male
participant values the opportunity to interact with others in a ‘community of
interest’, that ‘reinforces the global village idea’, but claims that meaning in
cyberspace is short-lived: ‘that feeling fades to a more realistic perspective
after the first 6 months or so’. Many respondents used terms such as lonely,
sad, addicted and isolated to characterize the notion that some users find
meaningful social interaction online.
Others are reflective about the meaning of, and commitment to, their
online communities. A 52-year-old male active in online groups for more
than six years says:
The online experience, initially, creates the illusion of involvement, of meaning,
but as one matures in the experience, one begins to ask, ‘What am I doing here?
Does it have any real effect?’ Just debating endlessly in some forum has little
effect on the world outside. Offering some person support can make a
difference. But meaning? Meaning is what we give or take in our interactions
with others. Net interaction can stimulate thought . . . but I don’t think meaning
is inherent in the experience.
Other interviewees share these concerns, hinting that there is no personally

meaningful symbolic community existing in cyberspace for them. A female
college student says that most groups are ‘a bunch of arguments’ and
that online citizenship is fun, but ‘not very serious’. A 24-year-old male
claims in an in-person interview that online interaction ‘could provide
meaning for some people, but I’m not sure it does for me’. He
continues:
I can interact with a lot of people, which is important to me. But there’s more
to life. I couldn’t live online because there isn’t enough there for me. . . . It’s kind
of hard to have a virtual girlfriend.There’s more depth of meaning in reaching
out and touching the world. For the deeper questions of life, most of them are
not answered online.
These ideas echo an idealized conception of community, but they exemplify

the embrace of community as symbolic, surpassing its formalist nature, only to
a limited extent. Although geographical or material conditions configure the
formation of community in the physical world, people do grant symbolic
meaning to their communities.This symbolic aspect of community highlights
substance over form, and it clarifies the process of establishing the meaning of
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community. For these interviewees, community means unity and support, but
perhaps not true commitment. Few respondents indicate a sense of belonging,
ownership, or investment in their online environments. Few perceive their
online groups as Cohen’s (1985) ‘convenient symbols of their social selves’.
Few would then agree with Cohen’s emphasis of community as meaning
over structure; rather, commitment holds more virtue as a social ideal for
these respondents. Some respondents do seem to embrace the notion that
communal meaning can reflect and shape one’s identity; particularly, they
distance themselves from the ‘computer geek’ stereotype of people who find
community meaning online. In general, their statements indicate a lack of
solid communal sentiment about their social relations online.While the sample
of interviewees is small and ungeneralizable, these in-depth interviews permit
an examination of substantive statements about how some users characterize
their online social activities. From these statements, a symbolic interactionist
perspective asserts that the meaning of community is diluted for these
participants. Perhaps due to some of the reasons stated earlier in this essay, the
term has become totalizing.
DISCUSSION: DILUTED COMMUNITY

Traditional notions of community are not truly manifested within cyberspace
for these participants.They question whether virtual communities have
enough genuinely invested members to develop sacred customs, folk legends,
and proud legacies in these spaces. Even intimate online communication is
still being mediated by the computer and by the fact that the communicators
are most likely strangers. Both the joy and the oppressiveness of that
computer-mediated intimacy are tempered by the lack of human contact.
The community metaphor placed on virtual social relations is inadequate
and inappropriate.The metaphor is one of fellowship, respect and tolerance,
but those qualities describe only a fraction of our culturally understood
ideas about community.
The tensions between the actual social practices in online and offline
communities are made more compelling by Jones’s (1995) suggestion that
online communities may have value only as a part of our private lives because
they may not fulfill western society’s craving for public community.
Recognizing that contemporary community relations encompass both public
and private, Bender (1978) argues, will create a culture able to quell the
impulse to search for community in all social relations.Thus, claims Bender,
we must realize the limits of community, including its oppressive potential, to
embrace a public life free of unfulfilled nostalgic yearnings for social intimacy.
According to Bender, we cannot achieve a true experience of community in
our public lives alone, and citizens must learn to understand the changing
nature of community to encompass private spaces.
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But Dewey (1927) argues that community is built around what we have in
common.Westerners generally have divisiveness in common; in our fragmented
social landscape, collective interests are routinely balanced against individual
rights, and individuality is pitted against the common good.This tension propels
our society forward and keeps us from annihilating ourselves. Our culture
is both unified and diverse and collectively and individually oriented; online
technology expresses this dynamic and demonstrates how these tensions can be
expressed in the metaphor of virtual community.The essence of community is
the communicative process, and communication is the means by which shared
perspectives bind members of a group together and help to define them as a
community (Scherer, 1972).Thus, the ‘community as communicative process’
metaphor is alive and well in cyberspace.
But that metaphor is one of convenient togetherness without real
responsibility. Members speak of mutual respect and caring, but demur at the
notion of true closeness that ideals of community evoke. Many interviewees
cited oppressiveness as a concern in their virtual communities, and one
respondent felt so stifled by his group that he eventually left it. Elements of
continuity and sustained interaction tend to be rare in online groups. Based on
these concerns, one might suspect that citizens of cybercommunities would
not tolerate some of the behaviors (such as banishment or ostracization)
associated with the intimacy they claim to want. As a society, we might
examine how desirable that closeness is in an era of private sensibilities.
Sennett (1977) has argued that Americans want to be ‘left alone’ in their
private lives – left alone to contemplate the benefits and responsibilities of
communal existence when convenient.The precarious balance between
wanting to be left alone with our individual freedoms and wanting to find
supportive intimacy of a communal nature endures as a theme of public
debate.The enchantment with social interaction in cyberspace allows us to
continue the debate without resolving it. Online social relations provide
opportunities to explore new avenues of community building, but few have
committed deeply enough to the endeavor to move beyond that metaphor of
convenient togetherness without true responsibility.
So, rather than asking whether or not cybercommunity is or isn’t real
community, a long-term perspective on the cultural significance of
cybercommunity focuses on how some users of online technology have
created meaningful constructs of social interaction in the online arena.Thus,
scholars will exploit further avenues for examining mediated culture and
social structures. Symbolic interactionists, notably Chicago School scholar
Robert Park, have recognized that people live life in multiple, overlapping
spheres of social interaction and community; online interaction is one of
those spheres. For now, the deepest significance of community remains in the
everyday, non-mediated, physical interactions we have with one another.
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ALTERNATIVES TO THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY CONSTRUCT

What does it mean to contemplate community online? The concept of
community as a social panacea has been weakened.The metaphor no longer
holds the salience it once did, and is inadequate to characterize the panoply of
social interactions, processes, and human sharing occurring in cyberspace.
The nostalgic community metaphor verges on the tyrannical because, as
an institution, community has no limits or checks; it is eternally sought
and persistently encouraged. Although the interviewees herein use the
term community to describe their online social interactions, they do so
inconsistently and without the meaningful commitment characterizing
Gemeinschaft-like social structures. But while Gemeinschaft ideals might
remain rhetorically paramount, perhaps place is not as important as
commitment in social organization.This is what Bennis and Slater (1968)
alluded to in their concept of ‘portable roots’, a briefly introduced concept in
the book The Temporary Society. In mobile societies, they argue, communal
ideals such as continuity and commitment can be achieved through association
with a job or church or other group that transcends physical place. Portable
roots, then, represent a freedom from place but an embrace of commitment.
Perhaps those interviewed in this study are seeking the commitment
of portable roots but have found it to be limited in their online
interactions.
What is useful in the study of online social relations includes the nuanced
and multifaceted approaches of scholars unburdened by the community label,
including the following examples. Network analysis is useful in understanding
how users of computer networks forge individual relationships that are
purposeful and less value-laden. Studies of place-based freenets promote an
understanding of how online technology can foster (successfully or
unsuccessfully) individual and group participation in democracy at a local
level.This is a pragmatic perspective on community, characterized by locality
rather than interests or symbols. Linguistic perspectives on social relations in
cyberspace are valuable to consider since discourse and language are central to
online communication. Discursive communities, described by Gurak (1997),
are bound by common understandings of behaviors and meanings within a
collective realm of action.Thus, discursively bound groups are not necessarily
characterized by Gemeinschaft-like qualities, and can lead to instrumental
groupings such as online learning collaboratives. Additionally, some businesses
are recognizing the limits of the online community metaphor. If cyberspace
itself is a product of a corporatized vision of global knowledge flows, then
community is merely a form of capital – the data in online transactions.
Noting that online communities were losing some of their vitality during
the dotcom bubble – TheGlobe.com folded,Yahoo purchased GeoCities,
and The Well was subsumed into Salon.com – Chisholm (2001) argues that
‘community’ was a successful marketing tool for online ventures that failed
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to translate into bottom-line profits. Despite this revelation, one respondent

to Chisholm’s article in an online forum stated:
The problem with an online only community is that there is no true connection
– the site is only a pool of info that many people come to visit. A true
community takes people with existing common interests and allows them to
form deeper relationships due to the communication advantages made possible
by technology.The online community is a supplement to those real world
connections, not a tool to replace them. (Cross, 2001)
This reader’s comments demonstrate an awareness of the primacy of the

communicative process in community formation. Community is not always
about consensus or intimacy. It is about understanding that humans are bound
together by a need to perpetuate society and culture.That need compels
humans to work together and to communicate in a continual process of social
maintenance or social change.This process is not always efficient or palpable;
it can be chaotic and oppositional.Wellman (2002) contends that people have
multidimensional social relationships – physical community, occupational
community, and social community.Therefore, the practice of community is
essentially a process of community. Dewey’s idea of community as a derivative
of communication emphasizes the dynamism of community.The process of
community is about evolution and stability or about power and reciprocity.
It accounts for the complexity of human relations without imposing
19th-century ideals of fellowship onto all productive social structures.
CONCLUSION: ONLINE SOCIAL RELATIONS AS COMMITMENT

The spatial metaphor of community as opposed to symbolic ‘communities of
interest’ seems a less useful dichotomy in the face of what is known about
online community. Indeed, Robins (1999) suggests that virtual community
is itself a socially regressive vision of technoculture desiring a world which does
not exist. Like politicians nostalgic for a bygone era of civility and harmony
that never was, Robins says ‘virtual culture is a culture of experiential
disengagement from the real world and its human condition of embodied
(enworlded) experience and meaning’ (1999: 166). He argues against the
‘obsessive’ characterization of geographic distance as tyrannical. Robins implies
that online community offers an anti-social and anti-political view of the
world:
Cyberspace, with its myriad of little consensual communities, is a place where
you will go in order to find confirmation and endorsement of your identity. And
social and political life can never be about confirmation and endorsement – it
needs distances. (1999: 169)
This illusory closeness and intimacy fights against the very nature of
adversarial democracy, he argues, and thus, online community is sentimental
and anti-democratic. Despite what might be an overstated divergence between
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the ‘real’ world and virtual culture, Robins offers a useful commentary about
the complexity of social relations, both offline and online. Considering the
potential oppressiveness of community in addition to its socially stabilizing
potential, we must move beyond the nostalgic ideal of community. New
media scholars must move beyond thinking about community as a product
or an end unto itself. We must move beyond thinking about community as
an online marketing strategy. We must move beyond the community
metaphor as the paradigm of online social relations. Ultimately, this study
suggests a symbolic interactionist approach to the examination of online social
relationships that is free of the controversy and structural-functional baggage of
the term community. According to this perspective, community is a mutable
construct, determined by social actors who create meaning about it.This
approach would recognize that online social structures are influenced by
institutional relationships, power, nationalism, global information and capital
flows, crisis management strategies, and other processes that construct our
‘communal’ practices.We enact community the way we’ve conceived of it.
The meaning of community evolves as we devise new ways to employ it.
People make networks into community even though networks may be more
temporary than physical place.Therefore, motivation, as embodied in the
portable roots concept, is the only permanent means toward commitment. And
solidarity and commitment are different concepts. If scholars continue to paint
internet studies with the broad brush of community, they dilute the potential
of the research to understand how online communities are constituted, how
they operate, how they are integrated into offline social life, or what they
provide. Scholarship would benefit from a considered turn toward the nature
of commitment in online social groups – how commitment is symbolically
formed online; how commitment to online social relationships is manifested in
everyday life; or to what extent the meaning of commitment to group is
enacted in the online sphere. Moving beyond community as a paradigm of
online studies is tantamount to moving beyond the ‘effects’ paradigm of mass
communication studies. It is an acknowledgement of the rich findings of the
past and future, as well as a commitment to other fruitful avenues of inquiry
into this social phenomenon.
Note
1 A version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the Association of
internet Researchers, 16 October 2003,Toronto, Canada.
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JAN FERNBACK (PhD, University of Colorado) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of

Broadcasting, Telecommunications and Mass Media of Temple University.
Address: Temple University, Annenberg Hall Rm. 205, Philadelphia, PA, 19122–6080, USA.
[email: fernback@temple.edu]
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New Media & Society

Beyond the diluted community concept: a symbolic interactionist

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new media & society

Beyond the diluted

New Media & Society 9(1)

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

WHAT STUDIES OF ONLINE COMMUNITY REVEAL

New Media & Society 9(1)

community exists. In the tradition of scholarship involving the social uses of

QUESTIONS OF COMMUNITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

New Media & Society 9(1)

analysis, a constructive way of examining online social relationships without

Wellman sees an evolution to the use of computer-communication networks

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

an enterprise that speaks to the study of community. Cohen’s (1985)

New Media & Society 9(1)

Qualitative methods are suitable for examining the process of human

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

(Patton, 1990).The in-person interviews generally lasted two hours, and

Online communication and public life

I see [my online groups] as an example of what telecommunications could/should

Despite her characterization of her participation in online groups in these

New Media & Society 9(1)

For this respondent, online community is a symbolic confidence-booster, but

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

symbolic communication (online community) can be used as a form of

For this respondent, online social interaction has a commercial/functional

New Media & Society 9(1)

The meaning of online activity as stereotype

The responses that follow, prompted by the same question, demonstrate an

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

This respondent echoes other interviewees who perceive the possibilities

Other interviewees share these concerns, hinting that there is no personally

These ideas echo an idealized conception of community, but they exemplify

New Media & Society 9(1)

DISCUSSION: DILUTED COMMUNITY

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

New Media & Society 9(1)

ALTERNATIVES TO THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY CONSTRUCT

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

to translate into bottom-line profits. Despite this revelation, one respondent

This reader’s comments demonstrate an awareness of the primacy of the

CONCLUSION: ONLINE SOCIAL RELATIONS AS COMMITMENT

New Media & Society 9(1)

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

New Media & Society 9(1)

Herman-Kinney, N.J. and Verschaeve, J.M. (2003) ‘Methods of Symbolic Interactionism’,

Fernback: Beyond the diluted community concept

JAN FERNBACK (PhD, University of Colorado) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of

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